Quotes from Philip Yancey

27The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. 28Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[149] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome." 29Jacob said, "Please tell me your name." But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.

Pharisees spend too much time around other Pharisees. As a result Pharisees (whether the Jewish or Christian variety) neglect wider issues, narrow their vision, and compete to achieve an artificial piety.

two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God's unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people. . . . We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that's not the way we live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.

How will we feel if historians of the future look back on the evangelical church of the 1990s and declare, "They fought bravely on the moral fronts of abortion and homosexual rights," while at the same time reporting that we did little to fulfill the Great Commission, and we did little to spread the aroma of grace in the world?

in John Adams' words, "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.

Anderson draws from the experience of Judas a key principle about prayer: "Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and unpredictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.

As a writer I have received my share of mixed reviews. Even so, as I read through stacks of vituperative letters, I got a strong sense for why the world does not automatically associate the word "grace" with evangelical Christians. Noxious

Democracy requires us to recognize others' rights even when we fundamentally disagree with them. It requires a civility in which I respect a person's ultimate worth and seek to persuade but not to coerce.

The worst moment for the atheist is

every year the church in the United States draws closer and closer to the situation faced by the New Testament church: an embattled minority living in a pluralistic, pagan society.

Democracy requires us to recognize others' rights even when we fundamentally disagree with them. It requires a civility in which I respect a person's ultimate worth and seek to persuade but not to coerce. For this reason modern democracy grew out of Christian soil. We must exercise the skill of ethical surgeons in deciding which moral principles apply to society at large and how best to apply them.

How can Christians dispense grace in a society that seems to be veering away from God?